


By Any Other Meaning

by minoriaki



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ficlet, Floriography, M/M, Open ended, repression!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24824830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minoriaki/pseuds/minoriaki
Summary: By this point he’s expecting it-- Manuela warned that the progression of his illness would lead to full blossoms climbing their way into the open as the presumed rosebush flourished within his repression, petals turning to blooms as the thorny branches made their way further up his throat.It seems the time is here, the perfect rose in his palm glossy with his own saliva. If he didn’t know better, hadn’t felt the way it choked him just moments before, he could almost be persuaded it was dew._____________Lorenz suffers from hanahaki, and finds a loophole.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	By Any Other Meaning

**Author's Note:**

> For the Lorenz Week charity raffle!!

Lorenz coughs up the first flower in secret, somewhere between the beginning of a poem and its conclusion. It’s during the second stanza, to be precise-- somewhere where the iambic pentameter of the sonnet fails and the metre of his coughing begins. Strong, weak, strong and then weak, until the bloom has loosed itself from his throat with an accompanying leaf or two as he spits it out into his hands. 

By this point he’s expecting it-- Manuela warned that the progression of his illness would lead to full blossoms climbing their way into the open as the presumed rosebush flourished within his repression, petals turning to blooms as the thorny branches made their way further up his throat. 

It seems the time is here, the perfect rose in his palm glossy with his own saliva. If he didn’t know better, hadn’t felt the way it choked him just moments before, he could almost be persuaded it was dew. 

He sits in a moment’s repose then, choosing between breathing and sipping his tea, indecisive in his uncertainty of which would garner him more comfort. The breathing wins, along with a bit of quiet contemplation 

A moment’s floriography persuades Lorenz that he cannot abide by the current state of the flower, proud and blooming and speaking of all things sincere, secret, and worthy. The volume in his hands confirms it, and it makes him want to retch again for how it speaks so boldly of what he wishes to feel. 

So he dries it, presses it between thick pages of parchment to say that he would rather die than sacrifice that virtue, a trick that the book gives him of transforming what he feels into what he wishes he felt instead. He wishes that he could honestly say he’d rather perish than feel this desire in himself for another, that he regrets what he feels and does not want it corrupting him, does not want him corrupting him, but... 

A huff as he slides the volume back onto his bookshelf in the space allotted. No, it has to dry. He has read the volume, and the bloom must be pressed and done away with before its sweet scent overwhelms him with the temptation to give into cloying affection-- as if its presence alone wasn’t damning enough evidence. 

If the pressed bloom finds its way into Claude’s reports, pinned painstakingly to a thick piece of parchment, then that is another matter entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> I know too much about flower language at this point for it to be healthy. 
> 
> [@Olivier_ebooks](http://www.twitter.com/Olivier_ebooks)


End file.
